


The Ripple Effect

by rael_ellan



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4022284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rael_ellan/pseuds/rael_ellan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It can be hard, watching someone lose themselves, but you can't always stop it.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>The start of a series of drabbles pre-Inception</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ripple Effect

_Noise. Light. Fusion._

_A car horn beeps outside the window. The shutters rattle back and forth, back and... Mal is in the kitchen, baking._

_A voice, singing a nursery rhyme out of tune._

_The branch of the birch tree taps on the front door._

_Laughter. High, shrieking laughter. Laughing at... laughing at..._

“Dom? Dom wake up.”

It was hot. Too hot. His hair hung in his eyes, dripping with his sweat. 

Arthur was looking down at him, frowning. He, Cobb noted somewhat bitterly, didn’t look particularly affected by the heat. He had taken his tie off, slung his jacket over the side of his bench. His waistcoat was still on. 

“We are never working out of Cairo again.”

Arthur snorted and released Cobb’s shoulder. He passed him a bottle of water. Cobb gulped it, gratefully.

“You shouldn’t go under on your own,” Arthur said, opening one of his myriad files to a page of numbers and digits. “Not with no one watching you.”

For a moment, he was tempted to throw it back in his point-man’s face. Tell him to mind his own business and worry about his damn job. 

Arthur was sitting, very obviously avoiding his gaze, back straight and his eyes fixed blankly on the page in front of him. The lines around his eyes were getting deeper. 

“Yeah. Yeah I know.”

For a fraction of a second, Arthur relaxed.

**Author's Note:**

> Found this lurking on my harddrive and decided to post it. I'm sure there was a bigger story going on, somewhere, but I can't for the life of my grasp it, so I'll leave it as a drabble.


End file.
